Eat Your Art Out, A Cupcake Shop, Is A Stand Out

Handout

Handout

SAMANTHA MANNS

Adolescence and early career ventures began on the same street for Lani Ramadanovich, the owner of Eat Your Art Out in North Haven. For high school she attended the Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven.

"I did visual arts. I took photography when I was there, I took video production. We had circus class; like I can juggle, I can tightrope walk. It's so weird, right? But, it was fun."

In 2004 Ramadanovich completed cosmetology school and opened up her own salon on Audubon Street, steps away from the ECA campus. She was taking the creative skills she learned in high school to the professional level. The salon was open through her first pregnancy, but she wasn't completely happy.

"I had my first daughter and I put her in day care a lot and I didn't really want to do that with my second one. So I had another one, I was pregnant, working like 90 hours a week and I decided to sell [the salon] and just stay home. I just wanted to be home with the babies."

That's when Ramadanovich began baking and as word spread and she perfected her techniques, she decided to open her own bakery, making cakes and cupcakes. Since January, Ramadanovich has operated Eat Your Art Out. She took time recently for a quick chat.

What are the most popular flavors?

"Reese's, chocolate, I don't know they kind of all go. Chocolate and Reese's are the biggest ones. Usually strawberry, raspberry, some kind of fruit one goes really fast. The kids all eat Oreo; it feels like every kid takes a buttercream or an Oreo or s'mores."

Do you think that people are really open to different flavors?

"They're not. Surprisingly. We just made a chai tea one, which I think tastes really good. With the cream cheese frosting it tastes really good. But whenever I do really funky ones people are kind of nervous. Although, we did a chocolate chip pancake batter with maple frosting and bacon, and that went like crazy. It was like breakfast. I drizzled maple syrup over it."

Is it more about the taste of the cupcake or the visual craft?

"Of course, both. Have you tried our cupcakes? They're freaking good, aren't they? I try hard to make them really moist and I learned all these really cool techniques to get them that way. That, and of course the visual part of it."

Did you figure the techniques out yourself?

"No, I Googled a lot of stuff, and then I have friends. My sister's husband's aunt is on the Food Network and runs this cake show."

What are your cakes best for?

"We can make anything. We do weddings, we do little tiny smash cakes for photos."

You created a cake off the children's book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar."

"You can borrow cake pans at the North Haven Library…. I remember seeing a Bundt cake and thinking that at some point that would work really well for something. Like a dragon or something. [The caterpillar] cake was actually huge. It wrapped all the way around."

What don't people know about your shop?

"We do doggie desserts, which are pretty big. We do birthday cakes for dogs, we do cupcakes for dogs. We've done cupcake towers for a group of dogs. We do a lot of organic bones and cookies for them with really good ingredients and healthy stuff."